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The Home Office is moving forward with legislation breaking international laws. Vulnerable refugees in danger at sea and at our borders in northern France continue to face cruelty and mistreatment.  Even those airlifted to the UK from Kabul under “Operation Warm Welcome” face long delays in poor conditions. In this Care 4 Calais blog a volunteer gives their experience of a camp clearance in Dunkirk, 23^rd-24^th September 2021. images: Thomas Gilbert / Roots (www.charitableroots.com)

On Thursday evening I got a panicked text from a friend in Dunkirk. Hundreds of riot police were descending on the large camp there, they said, accompanied by dozens of vans filled with CRS police and gendarmerie. Behind them were refuse trucks for the tents and belongings to be thrown in. And behind the trucks were land cleaners and diggers. 

This patch of scrub land had been home to a growing number of refugees, mainly from the persecuted Kurdish regions of the Middle East. It was turning into a bustling community, which is the very thing that terrifies the French authorities. So it was only a matter of time before it was cleared. 

“Cleared”. 

Such a small, bland word for wrecking someone’s home.

This time the camp was completely, brutally razed to the ground. Every tent, every tarpaulin, every makeshift shelter torn down, every blanket taken. The 800 people who had been living there were all roughly bussed off to either other regions of France, or to another local field well away from the water points. And any food or possession not in someone’s hands was scraped up and chucked into the trucks for landfill.

My friend said the remaining refugees urgently needed help in the form of blankets, sleeping bags, and tents and tarps. We began sorting hundreds of blankets, and the next morning we filled both our vans with them and drove up to Dunkirk. 

It was eerily quiet as we arrived. There was no hum of hundreds of voices going about their daily life; no more noise of women cooking; no more excited chatter of children. The sweet smells of woodsmoke and food were gone. All that remained was raw, bare, still fields. Yesterday home to 800 people; today, nothing. 

After we parked the vans, though, people began to appear. They had known we would come. People always stay in their area – they either run and hide from the police, or they mildly go with the buses, then return as soon as they can. 

In the autumn afternoon sunlight, the dejection on people’s faces was unbearable, as it always is after clearances. People put on a brave front, and their resilience was incredible, but it broke your heart to think what they were going through.

People guilty of nothing but trying to stay alive had had their few possessions broken and stolen. Important papers had been lost. Young parents suddenly had no food or nappies for their babies.

For some people this must been disturbingly similar to experiences that drove them from their homelands int the first place.

Even in these dire circumstances the people waited until we were ready and then stood in line to receive a blanket. And as always we had much needed tea, coffee and a listening ear with us. 

In the days since, we and other organisations have been working hard to make sure they’re warm and fed. It’s crucial that we do what we can to help them find food and shelter, because the weather is due to change for the worse; winter is approaching, and everyone knows it. 

What do the authorities hope to gain by all this? 

They say they need to make the area tidy, but strangely this fastidiousness doesn’t make them want to provide toilets or rubbish facilities.

Everyone knows the camp will gradually reform, here or elsewhere. There’s no conclusion to it; just an endless cycle of cruelty and spite. The point? There isn’t one. 

But the next time someone tells you refugees crossing the Channel should stay in France because it’s a “safe country, show them these pictures. 

Show everyone. 

Because there was nothing “safe” about what just happened in Dunkirk, just a few miles off the British coast.

Care 4 Calais continue their work in northern France with vulnerable displaced people. Visit https://care4calais.org/ to learn more and find ways to get involved.

A recent Human Rights Watch report ‘Enforced Misery – The Degrading Treatment of Migrant Children and Adults in Northern France’ reports on the current situation. It can be found here

On the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, 4th October 2021, Justice & Peace groups and their friends in Aberdeen diocese come together to pray for the success of COP26.  In his blog, Kenneth Sadler, Coordinator of the St Mary's Cathedral Aberdeen Justice & Peace Group reflects on a "moving service" enjoyed by all those attending.  

Monday 4 October was the feast of St Francis of Assisi; it was also the last day of the ecumenical Season of Creation 2021. On that day, at the parish of St Francis of Assisi, Mannofield, Aberdeen, Catholics from Scotland’s most northern diocese gathered to pray for the earth, our common home, for the success of COP26 in Glasgow, and for the good of the whole creation.

Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB led the powerful and moving service which included hymns, reflections, prayers, and scripture readings, as well as a penitential rite and act of commitment. The service emphasised the duty and obligation of Catholics to love and cherish the earth, which they are to acknowledge as a gift from God to care for and till.

At the welcome and introduction I felt privileged to reflect on how appropriate it was to hold the service on the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, famed for his great love of the natural world, and also to note the prominence of the environment in the teaching of Pope Francis, with his encyclical Laudato Si' giving vital encouragement to Catholics in their work for a just and green world.

After a searching penitential rite which highlighted ways in which we fall short in our relationships with nature and with others, the scripture reading from Colossians1 emphasised Christ’s headship of all creation; the subsequent Gospel from Mark 4 stressed Jesus’ easy familiarity with the natural world in the language of two parables and, dramatically, his power over nature itself in the calming of the storm. The interlude of Psalm 148 called for all creation to praise the Lord.

Bishop Hugh gave a personal and thought-provoking homily which brought together many of the themes of the evening. He observed that on this day Pope Francis, along with faith leaders and scientists, made a joint appeal at the Vatican for the international community to show greater ambition at COP26. The bishop recognised that the environmental cause engaged many people, and that Christians shared this concern, but the concern of Christians was even deeper due to their faith. He told those in attendance that Laudato Si’ was appreciated by many even outwith the Church as a definitive 21st century statement on the ecological crisis.

Referencing Genesis, Bishop Hugh recalled that God placed man in a garden to love and care for it; in a comparable way, we must hold dear the gift of creation. Remembering lessons from his Benedictine life at Pluscarden Abbey, where the brothers cherished humble material goods, the bishop stressed that everything is a gift from God our Father. The reading from Colossians 1 spoke of Christ as the firstborn of all creation: he is in creation and all things hold together in him. The beauty and reality of this vision can inspire the Catholic commitment to the environment. As Pope Francis writes in Laudato Si’, ‘Everything is connected.’

Jill Kent, Chair of Justice and Peace Scotland, read the intercessions which included calls for the gift of ‘ecological conversion’ and for those with authority who will gather for COP26 to commit to the ‘bold action’ that our planet and its people need in the face of climate breakdown.

Towards the end of the event, the people recited the beautiful Canticle of St Francis and, together, made a commitment to respect the earth, one another, and our fellow creatures that live on the earth, while being grateful for the beauty and goodness that surrounds us.  In a profound and memorable way, the prayer service in preparation for COP26 held in the Aberdeen parish of St Francis of Assisi, Mannofield, brought home to those present the importance of care for creation in the Christian’s journey of faith.

Kenneth Sadler
Coordinator, St Mary’s Cathedral Justice and Peace Group
05 October 2021

Just returned from a month helping destitute refugees at the border in Calais, Alex Holmes updates us on what life is like there now for those at the very margins of our society.  #Blog.

Fireside. Hamid is drawing. A broad highway tapers across the paper towards the mid-distant horizon. He uses the side of his phone to draw the tall walls that cut the road from the surrounding landscape. ‘Like here’, he says, pointing to the 4 metre high, UK funded, ‘security wall’ beneath which the small Eritrean encampment nestles. ‘When I get to the UK, I will be an artist or I will have a restaurant. That is my dream’. 

Providentially, just metres away, Rue Pasteur Martin Luther King runs as straight as the road in Hamid’s drawing towards the city centre. 58 years ago, Martin Luther King led the Walk to Freedom in Detroit where he gave the first of his ‘I have a dream’ speeches. He spoke of the Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, of ‘dark yesterdays’ being transformed into ‘bright tomorrows’. Calais’ Collège Martin Luther King proudly displays the 3 worded icon of French identity: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Liberty is in short supply for this exiled community. They have no documented identity, they’re deemed to have entered the country illegally, and are evicted from their encampment every day. But there is egality (every 2 weeks there is a change of the leadership group) and a deep fraternity. 

‘There are good times here and I can be happy. We look after each other’. Beside the fire, Yusef tells me of his most intimate experience of fraternity, when imprisoned in Eritrea after attempting to flee the country to avoid indefinite military conscription. A 2015 UN inquiry into gross human rights violations in Eritrea states that ‘thousands of conscripts are subjected to forced labour that effectively abuses, exploits and enslaves them for years’* According to the Global Slavery Index, ‘Eritrea has the highest prevalence of modern slavery across Africa (and the second in the world’)** ‘We were so close to each other in prison; we might fight but the next day we were best of friends. I will always remember those guys’. Yusef escaped in a mass breakout. He walked 6 days with no food, no shoes, terrified he would be informed on if he knocked at a door to ask for help. He eventually made it home, only to be caught and imprisoned after a second failed attempt at escaping the country. We discuss happiness. ‘If you listen to your body, you are never satisfied’, he tells me, ‘the body always wants more. You must listen to your soul. Your soul is with God. If you listen to your soul, you will want to do good to others, and that will make them happy, and make you happy’. Suddenly he’s gone, reappearing a few minutes later with a black bin bag which he slits open and puts around my shoulders. It has started to rain.

Fireside, the wind is relentless, in perpetual self-combat. A paper cup pirouettes around the fire. ‘Tiki (smoke in Tigrinya) is your best friend, it always comes to you’ jokes Mewael. Rats scuttle out from the undergrowth in search of food. Mewael picks up a stone and hurls it towards a stationary rat sniffing the air. He misses his target by a whisker. His English, like Yusef’s, is good. ‘I tried to read ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, but it was a bit hard. Now I am reading ‘Think and Grow Rich’. I ask him what he will do if he grows rich. ‘I will have a chain of hotels all around the world’. Like Hamid, Mewael too has a dream.

Fireside. Milk heating over the flames. At last a feel of summer. Fikru, his hair freshly dyed black, grins as he points at my head, ‘I used to look like you…and now I am a young man again.’ Each day, I’m taught a new phrase in Tigrinya. Today Fikru’s offering is ‘alam dirfo’, (the world is a chicken). ‘Explain!’ I ask. ‘The world is a chicken, to one person it gives an egg, to another, poop’. There is much laughter. I share news of Eritrean friends I first met here in Calais, Isaias who has just graduated in chemical engineering, Sheshy who is about to study pharmacy, Anbesa, dentistry. Dreams materialising. Hamid joins the fireside gathering. ‘This is for you’, he says, handing me his now completed drawing. The walled-in road arrows into the mid-distance; once there, a new world opens, hills, the sun, birds, a plane. Still a dream for Hamid, but one that he’s determined to birth. ‘You go to UK tomorrow’. He punches the air. ‘I will get there before you!’